Homeless Outreach Team member walks the streets no more

Being a street counselor for the homeless takes an odd mix of toughness, patience and the savvy for the gutter that usually only comes with hard living. Robert “Bobby” Bernardo had all of those characteristics along with that other one that’s can be even rarer: a big heart.

Bernardo was a former drug addict who’d cleaned up more than a decade ago and became a counselor for runaways, other addicts and the homeless. He wound up with San Francisco’s Homeless Outreach Team five years ago and quickly earned admiration for his habit of buying $50 worth of hamburgers every so often and handing them out to the homeless he’d been trying to talk into rehab or a shelter.

He did the same thing with pants, a prized item for anyone sleeping outside. Every month or so, he’d go to The Gap, buy several dozen pair and head out to the street. That’s not an easy sacrifice for someone living on a meager street counselor’s salary.

It all came to an end for Bernardo at age 52 on July 16 when he lost a three-month battle with cancer. But for his friends, the inspiration and memories he left behind are anything but over and they hold a memorial for him at noon Saturday at the Potrero Hill Recreation Center park at 801 Arkansas Street.

“Bobby just understood people,” said his friend and fellow Homeless Outreach Team counselor Scott Conforte. “No matter how many times they relapsed, how many times they blew him off, he would go back to them. That’s what addiction is about — he would keep at, and if you do that eventually people can come around.”

Bernardo, he said, “didn’t look at his job for just a paycheck. He looked to it to do good. It didn’t matter if a guy was covered in feces in the street — and that happens — he’d talk to him.”